#314 Paul Graham (How To Do Great Work)

What I learned from reading How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. --- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book --- (2:00) All you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in. (2:10) Doing great work means doing something important so well that you expand people's ideas of what's possible. (4:15) How many even discover something they love to work on? A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions.  —How to Do What You Love by Paul Graham (5:10) Always preserve excitingness. (Let what you are excited about guide you) (8:15) If you're excited about some possibility that everyone else ignores, and you have enough expertise to say precisely what they're all overlooking, that's as good a bet as you'll find. (9:15) How To Work Hard by Paul Graham (10:05) When you follow what you are intensely interested in this strange convergence happens where you're working all the time and it feels like you're never working. (10:20) You can't tell what most kinds of work are like except by doing them. You may have to work at something for years before you know how much you like it or how good you are at it. (13:00) When it comes to figuring out what to work on, you're on your own. (14:00) Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain by Roy Morris Jr. (Founders #312) (17:15) One sign that you're suited for some kind of work is when you like even the parts that other people find tedious or frightening. (17:50) Make what you are most excited about. (19:00) If you're interested, you're not astray. (19:30) Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #300) (20:15) At each stage do whatever seems most interesting and gives you the best options for the future. I call this approach "staying upwind." This is how most people who've done great work seem to have done it. (22:50) In many projects a lot of the best work happens in what was meant to be the final stage. (25:00) A Mat